Teaching
Robin Beardsley MD, CCFP is a Family Physician practicing psychotherapy in Ottawa, ON.
Robin graduated from the University of Toronto and is a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, the Cdn College of Family Physicians, MDPAC ( the Medical Psychotherapy Association of Canada), the Satir Institute of the Pacific, and is a trained teacher of the Mindful Self Compassion 8-week course (developed by Dr’s Kristen Neff and Chris Germer) and Compassion Fatigue Solutions (nowTENDAcademy).
She has taught and practiced the Satir Transformational Systemic Model for over twenty years, facilitating and supervising at level 1-3 trainings and has recently completed her level 1 training in Internal Family Systems (Richard Scwartz). Robin draws upon her knowledge of these models, using tools and techniques aimed at increasing awareness of internal resources and parts of participants, cultivating mindfulness and self-compassion and brings her presence, fun and experience to her workshops.
Teaching can be tailored to fit the needs of your group, team or individuals and can be run as short introductory sessions, half day or full day programs or broken down into weekly sessions. The Mindful Self Compassion course generally runs for 2 ½ hours for 8 weeks.
Inner Resiliency Training (IRT) for Health Care Providers
with Robin Beardsley, MD
As Professionals and caregivers, we can all experience some degree of Caregiver Fatigue, which is characterized by profound emotional and physical exhaustion. This is a form of relational pain, one of connection, having emotional resonance with someone we care about who suffers and impacts our lives. Add onto this, the often, overwhelming tasks we have to complete each day in healthcare, and the limited resources; over time, there can be a gradual erosion of all things that keep us connected to ourselves and others.
Rapidly expanding research demonstrates that self-compassion is strongly associated with inner resiliency, emotional wellbeing, less anxiety, depression and stress, maintenance of healthy habits and satisfying personal relationships. This 6-week, empirically-supported Inner Resiliency Training, will focus on a way of coping with the stress of being a caregiver with more hope, strength and compassion. You will learn specific tools which will help you navigate the emotional ups and downs that caregiving brings with greater ease.
Learn more about Inner Resiliency Training (IRT) for Health Care Providers
Topics:
- Practice self-compassion in daily life.
- Understand the empirically-supported benefits and myths of self-compassion.
- Motivate yourself with kindness rather than criticism.
- Connect with your Inner Resilience.
- Manage caregiver fatigue.
- Revisit the core values that bring you passion.
What to Expect:
Program activities include: short talks, experiential exercises, group discussion, and home practices. The intention over the 6-week course is for participants to directly experience their own inner resilience and learn practices that can be supportive in times of struggle. This IRT includes 6 weekly sessions of 1 hour each, with lunch provided.
Presenter: Robin Beardsley, MD
Robin Beardsley, MD is a Physician who practices psychotherapy and a Trained Teacher in Mindful Self-Compassion. She has always had a passion for care for the caregiver. MSC helps to meet this passion and fits with her positive psychology approach
I learned practical skills that I use every day at the bedside and I share with my residents. It gave me something to teach them and model for them besides simply telling them to ‘take a day off’ when they were overwhelmed.
Mindful Self-Compassion
with Robin Beardsley, MD
Objective
Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) is an empirically-supported, 8-week, training program designed to cultivate the skill of self-compassion through self-kindness, common humanity, and mindful awareness. “With self-compassion, we give ourselves the same kindness and care we’d give to a good friend.” ~ Kristin Neff
Topics
- Practice self-compassion in daily life.
- Understand the empirically-supported benefits of self-compassion.
- Motivate yourself with kindness rather than criticism.
- Handle difficult emotions with greater ease.
- Transform challenging relationships, old and new.
- Manage caregiver fatigue.
- Practice the art of savoring, gratitude, & self-apprecia
Learn more about Mindful Self-Compassion
What to Expect
Program activities include meditation, short talks, experiential exercises, group discussion, and home practices. The intention over the 8-week course is for participants to directly experience self-compassion and learn practices that evoke self-compassion in daily life. MSC includes 8 weekly sessions of 2.5 hours each, in addition to a 4-hour retreat. Prior to registering, participants should plan to attend every session and practice mindfulness and self-compassion at least 30 minutes per day throughout the program.
Prerequisites
No previous experience with mindfulness or meditation is required to attend MSC. Interested participants are required to attend a 60 minute Information Session prior to starting the course.
Presenter: Robin Beardsley, MD
Robin Beardsley, MD is a Physician who practices psychotherapy and a Trained Teacher in Mindful Self-Compassion. She has always had a passion for care for the caregiver. MSC helps to meet this passion and fits with her positive psychology approach.
The Use of SELF in Therapy
Accessing Therapeutic Presence
with Robin Beardsley MD.
Experiential Training: 2 Days
Objective
- Explain the meaning of Therapeutic Presence and Self-Compassion
- Understand the empirically supported benefits of Therapeutic Presence and Self-compassion
- Develop skills for cultivating and accessing therapeutic presence or SELF, and maintaining this presence during therapy sessions
- Explore the qualities of SELF; activate and utilize innate resources
- Learn how to motivate ourselves with kindness and compassion instead of self- criticism
- Bring Acceptance, Hope and Compassion when faced with caregiver fatigue
- Trust intuition to guide the therapeutic process
- Reconnect with your own essence
Overview
When we are really present for others, we bring our whole SELF, physically, emotionally, cognitively, spiritually and relationally. Clients will have a “felt” sense, a neurophysiological sense, of being safe, being witnessed, being heard and understood. This presence will allow clients a secure foundation from which they can be with their challenging emotional inner worlds with more regulation, access their inner strengths and resources, their own innate deeper wisdom and stimulate their own inner healing energy. This therapeutic presence with others has been shown with research to be the most consistently confirmed predictor of change in therapy. As Maya Angelou so eloquently wrote “people will never forget how you made them feel!”
Learn more about The Use of SELF in Therapy; Accessing your Therapeutic Presence
This 2-day experiential workshop will address some of this research using Dr Shari Geller’s book, A practical Guide to Cultivating Therapeutic Presence. We will also explore how self-compassion can be a resource to bring about this presence. In order to acquire a deeper understanding of presence and self-compassion, direct experience is required. This will be accomplished through mindfulness, exercises, short didactic lectures and group discussions. Participants will come away with a “felt” sense of presence, and a variety of tools and techniques for ongoing practice of presence for themselves, that can be taught to others, including clients. Accessing and living from SELF can be a powerful resource not only to maintain emotional balance in the midst of challenging work, but also it can be a key in mitigating caregiver fatigue. Contact for more details…
Sculpting
A Somatic Tool for Accessing our Inner Worlds and Physiological States
with Robin Beardsley MD.
Experiential Training:
- Half Day
- Full Day
Have you ever noticed…
Have you ever noticed that inner voice inside? The one that might be angry at yourself or others when you start to get frustrated or sad. Or the one that says it doesn’t want to get up in the morning or leave when you are having fun. Sometimes how we relate to our thoughts or extreme emotions, actually cause us to have more internal turmoil or suffering. Just as with difficult people in your family or work, we have to learn how to relate to these parts of ourselves that hold or express emotions or thoughts.
Overview
The development of our parts depends largely on how we perceive, navigate or survive our external worlds using our threat defense systems and how we experience others experiencing us. These parts may be out of awareness or felt in the body, but not known to our logical mind. Bessel van der Kolk stated in his book The Body Keeps the Score, that once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than fear, everything shifts.
Learn more about Sculpting; A Somatic Tool...
Virginia Satir (1916-1988) a family therapist since the early 50’s had similar beliefs to the Internal Family Systems Model developed by Richard Schwartz. She too believed that we have all the internal resources we need to cope successfully and to grow, and that change is always possible on the inside. (The New Peoplemaking, 1988). Both models are based on a spiritual concept of SELF or Life Energy and connection with an Inner Wisdom.
In this experiential workshop, participants will have the opportunity to gain further knowledge of how to safely work with the body in therapy through sculpting. Virginia exaggerated the body’s physical manifestation of our protective parts and called them the communication stances, now referred to as the coping or defense stances. Externalizing these stances through sculpting can be a safe way to un-blend and explore defensive parts. These stances can also create an opportunity to have a “felt” experience and to realize the resources of parts who helped them to survive or cope in past and current situations. In addition, opportunities will be available to explore how we and our other parts relate to these stances. Emphasis will be on building from what we already know about our own systems and in our experience from working with others.
This training is for anyone working with clients, or students moving into the field of psychotherapy or counseling, and can be tailored to a half day or full day teaching.
Making Friends with Yourself
with Robin Beardsley, MD
Teens: 12 – 18 yrs.
Adolescence is a time of change and growth. The demands in life increase for teens and young adults; this time can be confusing and provoke anxiety and depressive symptoms. For many young people, these challenges can lead to disconnection and isolation.
Making Friends with Yourself is an 8-week program designed to facilitate awareness, self-kindness and stronger connections in response to these growing challenges. Teens will have the opportunity to incorporate mindfulness and self–compassion into their daily life. Mindfulness teaches students to be present with their emotions, and self-compassion helps them respond to these emotions with greater kindness and self-care. Through developmentally appropriate activities and meditations, teens will learn specific tools which can help them navigate the emotional ups and downs of this life stage with greater ease.
“With self-compassion, we give ourselves the same kindness and care we’d give to a good friend.” ~ Kristin Neff
Inner Resiliency Training: Self-Compassionate Mindfulness
for those with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury,
their Caregivers & Trainers
with Robin Beardsley, MD
Objective
Many who have experienced a brain injury have difficulty coping with everyday life. It can be very frustrating to not be able to do the things you once did. Sometimes this frustration can lead to many emotions which activate our limbic system and our threat-defense system making it even more difficult to respond to situations. We can become more critical of ourselves and our abilities. Our thinking brain goes off-line and we are unable to respond as we might like.
Inner Resiliency Training (IRT) is a 6-week course in which we will explore impacts of ABI (Acquired Brain Injury) on those affected, caregivers and trainers using experiential, didactic and small group exercises. Participants will learn about and experience techniques aimed at cultivating mindfulness and self-compassion to respond more skillfully with day to day challenges based on the teachings of Kristin Neff and Chris Germer.
Inner Resiliency Training Aim
Continue to promote the tremendous benefit of the MBCT support program, which volunteers have generously run for several years:
- Support the existing program by offering MBCT participants and leaders a course in mindfulness and self-compassion (at times that do not interfere with the MBCT support program)
- Mindful Self-Compassion parallels and compliments the MBCT work and may help participants deal with their post-concussion symptoms and live with greater ease.
- Refresh Mindfulness and add a Self Compassionate aspect.
Attendance
It is recommended that you attend all sessions if possible especially session 1. If you need to miss a session, please advise Robin if possible. Missing more than 2 sessions may mean you will not get the full benefit.
Prerequisite
Concussion Support Group Only
Mandatory
2 Intro Classes • Jan. 17 & 24, 2020 • 10am – 11:30am • Previous participants welcome
Cost
- Covered by OHIP – Participants must provide: OHIP info (name, address, date of birth, OHIP number & version code, expiry date)
- Doctor’s referral to Dr. Beardsley for ABI-group therapy.
- If your physician is in a “Health Team”, they may wish to know that, since Dr Beardsley has a Focused Practice, there will be no impact on access bonuses.
- Donations to Trinity: Room Rental: $50. Please consider making a donation to Trinity for the use of the room.
Presenter: Robin Beardsley, MD
Robin Beardsley, MD is a Physician who practices psychotherapy and a Trained Teacher in Mindful Self-Compassion. She brings her presence, fun and experience to her workshops.